Hacking Hardware Homebrew Oldies Wii USB Reading Issue

[Asc]

Hello all

Recently picked up an RVL-001 and am eager to get into homebrewing. Been great so far, however, I have run into a more than minor issue.
I am unable to access any files on properly formatted (FAT32 MBR) drives in any homebrew application. USB Loader GX, Nintendon't, WiiFlow WFL, WiiXplorer SS, none of these are able to read any data through either of the USB ports. I've tried using both an external Seagate 2TB drive and a 4GB generic flash drive (both formatted to FAT32 and with correct file structure) with different files, but get the same errors in all 4 homebrew apps. They are able to detect that there is in fact a drive plugged in, but can't do anything with them. USB Loader GX mentions "No WPFS or FAT/NTFS/EXT partition found", but I am more than certain that is incorrect.
The SD card slot reads and writes just fine, but I am at a bit of a standstill on just what to try now other than post here. I will attach my syscheck file here in the off chance that some benevolent soul will descend and be able to parse a solution to the exact issue I am having, but my greatest fear so far is that my ports are bust.

Spoiler: syscheck

SysCheck ME v2.5.0 by blackb0x, JoostinOnline, Double_A, R2-D2199 and Nano
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.3U (v513)
Priiloader installed
Drive date: 07.14.2008
Homebrew Channel 1.1.2 running on IOS58

Hollywood v0x21
Console ID: 91136493
Console Type: Wii
Shop Channel Country: United States (49)
Boot2 v4
Found 71 titles.
Found 49 IOS on this console. 15 of them are stubs.

IOS3 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
IOS12 (rev 526): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS37 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS40 (rev 3072): Stub
IOS41 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 5120): Stub
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS52 (rev 5888): Stub
IOS53 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): No Patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS62 (rev 6430): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 6912): Stub
IOS80 (rev 6944): No Patches
IOS222 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS223 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS248[38] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v11beta3): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249[56] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v11beta3): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[57] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v11beta3): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS251[58] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v11beta3): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65281): BootMii
BC v6
MIOS v10
Report generated on 01/22/2026.

 

[jeannotte]

Hello,

Your syscheck report is correct.

Are the external hard drive and USB flash drive formatted as MBR and not GPT?

Did you use "guiformat" to format your storage devices (FAT32)?

What application did you use to transfer your games to your storage device?

 

[Asc]

Hello,

Your syscheck report is correct.

Are the external hard drive and USB flash drive formatted as MBR and not GPT?

Did you use "guiformat" to format your storage devices (FAT32)?

What application did you use to transfer your games to your storage device?

Hi Jeannotte, thank you for replying.

I had reset the volumes on both the HDD and Flash Drive and switched them to MBR in advance. I did use guiformat to format the only partitions on the drives to FAT32 with 32k clusters. I tried using both Wii Transfer Tool and TinyWiiBackupManager to store games on both devices. They read and write perfectly fine from PC, and I can access backups through Dolphin emulator, but the Wii doesn't recognize anything.

 

[jeannotte]

Is the USB device plugged into port 0?

If possible, try a different USB device.

Check if your USB port is faulty.

 

[Asc]

Is the USB device plugged into port 0?

If possible, try a different USB device.

Check if your USB port is faulty.

I've tried both port 0 and port 1. Port 0 detects when a drive is plugged in, but can't read or initialize it. Port 1 simply does not register an input. I've tried multiple USB devices, unfortunately to similar resulting failures. As for how to determine if the USB port is faulty, I don't know how to test it. How do you recommend going about testing the port?

 

[jeannotte]

Test with a Y-cable for your external hard drive.

 

[Asc]

Y-cable arrived today. Just tried it, unfortunately running into the exact same issues still.

 

[Abaw245]

Did you check if the homebrew channel can detect and load your USB device? Try copying your apps folder on either the HDD or USB stick and see if the homebrew channels sees anything (to check press 1 on the homebrew channel and switch to USB device, your homebrew apps should appear and load).